The last time I went to the Watts Gallery at Compton was some years ago, before the artist's former home of Limnerslease was open to the public: I was part of a group being given a preview while it was all being set up. So I was grateful when Dr RedMedea suggested we go to see the gallery's current temporary exhibition (she had also been before, with Archangel Janet and Lady Wildwood). This was examining the generation of artists at the end of the 1800s and start of the 1900s who looked back to the original Pre-Raphaelites and used their idioms and styles to explore fantasies, dreams and symbolism. As always I was as much taken by fragments and details as overall pictures. In Limnerslease I shouldn't have been taking photos at all, but this was only pointed out to me when it was too late: 'the signage isn't very clear', the attendant admitted, and in the temporary exhibition you're positively encouraged to snap away, exactly the opposite way round from the practice of most museums and galleries. Mary Watts's amazing reredos for the Military Chapel at Aldershot reminds me, at least compositionally, of the one that still graces St Paul's church in Dorking, which I thought I had illustrated on this blog but now can't find!
Even the gallery shop brought surprises. They are selling a gin that apparently uses water from the holy well at Walsingham, and on picking up a copy of a book I knew had been planned about local buildings made of Bargate stone I found a picture of my own house in it, so just had to buy a copy to be supportive.
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